Bonnie Honig in conversation with Arnon Grunberg

Bonnie Honig embodies the public intellectual like few others. With her funny and fine-edged essays analyzing Trump’s shock politics, the significance of Stranger Things’ popularity, and feminist resources for defending democracy. At the same time, she is one of the world’s foremost democratic theorists, combining sources as diverse as Nietzsche, Arendt, Rousseau, Lars von Trier, 12 Angry Men, Antigone and gothic romance novels in her writings on democracy.

One of the major themes of her work is how contestation, rather than consensus, should be central in a democracy. She is a founding thinker of the agonistic democratic movement, driving its inspiration from the ancient Greek culture’s emphasis on the agon, for struggle. In recent work she explores how ‘public things’, like education, national parks and healthcare, are a precondition for democracy – but are often under pressure from privatization and neoliberalism.

Tonight, Honig enters into conversation with Arnon Grunberg. They will talk about public things, emergency and shock politics, her feminist interpretations of Hannah Arendt and democracy in disrepair. Bastiaan Rijpkema, who wrote an introduction to the first Dutch translation of one of Honig’s works: Publieke dingen, will introduce the evening.

In collaboration with Leiden University.

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